Making her Joyful Again || RF Julie x FEM reader || L1TTL3_R0TT3N

- Ch. 26: Starving Earth -

! TW: suicide !

"What is this?" Dr. Frankly asked as they were handed a letter of resignation. [Name] was resigning. Barnaby shrugged, scratching the back of his neck. "I dunno. She slipped in and out of the factory in a trenchcoat."

Frank looked up at Barnaby. "What color?"

"Brown."

"Good god."

Frank rubbed the bridge of their nose, the cold brass of their wedding ring hitting his cheek. "Did she tell you why?" He briefly closed their eyes but opened them when Barnaby responded. "Nope."

But a sudden barrage of sirens and alarms blared through the factory. All light became flashes of red, adding in and out through either darkness or redness. "Shit." Their voices synced with worry.

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"You bastard from hell!" Walden shouted as Harold threw another punch to his jaw. Walden's head was forced to the side, a bruise already forming on his cheek when bone met bone. 

"She was nothing but kind to you." Harold's voice practically boomed through the office. Smoke emitted from the dark red of his skin as he grabbed Walden's collar.

"You destroyed my daughter like she was nothing!" He snarled, the fury in his eyes unmatchable to Walden's as he threw him against his desk. Like cardboard, it snapped.

All Walden could see was smoke through the alarms and flashing red lights. "You can't ever let anything be, can you?" His eyes narrowed into sharp slits.

Walden gritted his teeth, spitting blood out of his mouth. Finally, a pair of arms wrapped around Harold's waist. "Don't kill him!" Julie shouted, prying him away from Walden. Harold's expression didn't change, but he didn't harm Julie.

"I don't need your help, Julie. I got this." Walden panted, getting up from the broken desk. "I'm not helping you. I...I can't find [Name]." She spoke with a broken voice. At the mention, Harold went still.

No. He saw her just before she went to visit the twins. "How do you know?" He wasn't trying to be rude. He was scared now. Through teary eyes, she spoke. "I...I went to talk to her after she visited me...but she wasn't there."

Harold could no longer think of killing Walden. Once again, he put his anger ahead of his daughter. What a miserable excuse for a father he was. Not even able to think of where she would've gone, he drew a blank as he stood still in fear.

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Even as rain poured, [Name] could still make out the distinct details of her childhood home. She remembered it to be less run-down and overgrown, but then again, no one had lived in it for twenty years.

The pink paint of the house was chipped. The panel walls were covered in vines. The windows were filthy and cracked. Even the convertible, once belonging to her mother in her heyday, was still there to be eaten alive by the earth, as revenge for his cruelty.

She could still remember her mother's scraggly voice and the way she smelled of cigarettes. She could remember that but couldn't remember the name she was given at birth.

She walked up to the screen door and pushed it open. She could hear the loud squeal of the rusted door hinge. 

It was insane how she could still recall every detail in the house, everything about the noises it made and the cracks in its walls, but she couldn't remember anything about her childhood before Harold.

The carpet, though stained and filthy, was still the same moldy pink she remembered it to be. She needed no light. The sun peeked through the broken windows and dirty curtains. She looked around the house.

The old TV and her toys were scattered around the room, now covered in rat droppings and thick layers of dust. She wandered around until she caught a glance at her mother's bedroom door. She never remembered her mother's room. She never wanted to go inside.

She pushed the door open. It let out a mewl, its hinges just as rusty as the front doors. She looked around the room, and nothing stood out. Just a bed and TV. What surprised her, however, was that the TV was still on.

It unnerved her. The power was cut out after her mother died and [Name] was taken into Harold's care. She walked up to the TV. 

She caressed the static on the screen before she eventually turned it off. Finally, the silence of the whirring buzz of the TV.

She glanced at the wooden dresser beside her mother's bed. There was an array of yellowed papers on its surface. She leaned closer, seeing her reflection in the filthy and almost unrecognizable mirror. 

She recalled how even when she and her mother lived in the house, the mirror was never cleaned. Her mother hated mirrors. Hated seeing her reflection.

She finally read the papers.

"July 2nd, 19XX."

"I simply can't take it anymore. I can't live with the burden, her burden that she holds. It's all her fault. If she had simply never happened, perhaps he would've stayed. I will drive her to the woods and leave her there. It's all I can do for her. I'll drive down the main street and let myself be carried off of the bridge. If there is a God, he should've saved me by now."

"-Tawny"

[Name] stopped reading after that. The page under it was her will and testament, never even touched. No one even came to look for her when she disappeared.

 Perhaps it was better that way since the will was unfinished. "I guess she just couldn't take it." 

[Name] sat down on the old dusty bed, hands in her hair. She knew she was the reason for all of this, why her birth father who wasn't even her father disappeared, why her mother dumped her in the woods and drove off of a bridge, why Walden was such a shitty person, all of it.

Maybe, just like her mother, she was better off isolated and alone.

She continued rummaging around. In her top drawer, there were some old photos. They were yellowed and dusty, but she could easily see the image of a baby girl in her mother's arms. That was the first baby photo [Name] had never seen of herself.

On the back, it said 'Primrose Melanie, 19XX'

That must've been her birth name. She knew Harold named her because she didn't remember her name, and sometimes she'd wonder what her real name was, but after so long, she grew on her name.

She thought she'd be overjoyed to know her real name. Or even angry that she couldn't remember it. But she felt nothing.

The name 'Primrose Melanie' felt like the name of a total stranger. Tawny felt like a stranger. The baby in the photo was a stranger. 

And even as [Name], she felt like a stranger.

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